About This Teaching
A lay practitioner reports her practice and asks for guidance. Ajahn Dtun approves that she keeps the five precepts as a matter of course. Feelings that the body is dissolving into space are simply conditions arising for the mind to see: there is space within the body, and seeing this helps the mind gradually let go of attachment to the body.
She tries to see the three characteristics in the five khandhas. He advises that while the practice is still at an early or middle stage and the finer khandhas cannot yet be seen, it is enough to contemplate the impermanence and not-self of the body, and to watch liking and disliking toward sights, sounds and other contacts, and the moods of greed, anger and sensual desire, seeing them as impermanent.
It is normal that mental proliferation stops while the mind is peaceful in samādhi and resumes when it withdraws. He advises making the mind peaceful often and, when thoughts arise, seeing them as impermanent and letting them go. Whatever arises should be known as it is in the present. Continuing to develop sīla, samādhi and paññā, the practice will develop by itself.